


denouement

by happycakeycake



Category: Monsta X (Band)
Genre: Chae Hyungwon-centric, Gangs, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, Mafia AU, Mystery, Organized Crime, Smoking, Violence, bap skydive au, noir-feel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-17
Updated: 2018-05-17
Packaged: 2019-04-05 08:52:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,659
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14040615
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/happycakeycake/pseuds/happycakeycake
Summary: (n.) the climax of a chain of events, usually when something is revealed or made clear.the fall of the Clan begins from within*a monsta x redux of the bap skydive au





	denouement

**Author's Note:**

  * For [writersstudy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/writersstudy/gifts).



> So I definitely took a few liberties with the prompt...im sorry writersstudy i had too much fun with it. I hope it will still meet your expectations and that you can still enjoy it for its final finished product now! In the end, thank you for giving me this awesome prompt and for the mx fic organizers for hosting this entire exchange! it doesn’t exactly follow the spring theme...but well, have fun reading anyway :)
> 
> There are some spoilers that could be given away by tags (especially for those who haven’t seen BAP’s skydive mv) so i’ve included them in the endnotes instead of in the tags - click to the endnotes if you want a heads up. 
> 
> disclaimer: i know nothing about poker haha
> 
> BAP skydive mv that this au is based on: [*](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7VEZuvy0-cc)  
> mood music: [*](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7ea2mi9KyE)  
> 

Glasses, booze, smoke, and jazz all clink, breathe, and intertwine through the low wandering spotlight. There's a strange tactile texture to the sound stringing itself in a mist of webs over Hyungwon’s ears and he is dreaming, lost in the smog-filled atmosphere of crowd and drink.

Then, there’s the soft rumbling of a far-off foghorn, its warning rippling waves across his subconscious, rocking the foamy undercurrent of his dreams - he blinks and wakes.

“What?” He looks up - a shadow looms over his own, adorned in a misshapen skinny tie and an uneven collar ruffled around its neck.

Changkyun frowns and motions at the smudged imprint on the bar top. Residue from a stale drink, or perhaps the heat from his own pressed cheek. “You fell asleep.” Hyungwon swipes surreptitiously at the corner of his mouth. His hand comes back ghostly pale but dry under the low bulb.

He glances back at the younger man, but there’s no hint of a joke in his flat stare - no emotion there, really. The dangling bulb blinks in and out to the sway of the double bass, and Hyungwon watches the shadows in Changkyun’s eyes play to the same rhythm. The filaments crackle dangerously above head as if filled with wasps instead of electricity, and he decidedly glances back down at the napkin wrinkled between his fingers. The lighting here has always been shit anyway.

He finally looks back up at the tell-tale rasp of an envelope. “Someone left this for you,” Changkyun murmurs, sliding a flat black folder across a fine layer of congealed residue. Hyungwon opens his mouth in vague protest, but before any ‘who’ or ‘what’ can form from his swollen tongue Changkyun is gone - slinking through the rumble and noise, disappearing in a cloud of smoky phosphorescence.

Hyungwon shifts back to the bar, futile efforts drowned with another sip of melting ice cubes mixed with ginger ale and focuses his attention back on the mystery message. The paper makes a familiar noise when he runs his finger across the edge, plucking vibrations from the twined string clasp. He lifts the envelope up and shakes it lightly, waiting for the potential weight of a pill to rustle from within. It jumps without force in his hands, and only the sound of more paper jostles inside.

Hyungwon considers it in all its unassuming plainness, its empty contents, and upends it onto the bar top without a second thought.

A smattering of papers flutters into a delicate fan before him, drifting for a moment before each settles itself into a crisp and even display. He looks over each one, the stark darkness of each background, the garishly lit face photographed at the center of it all, and he forgets how to breathe. The sounds of the bar fade to a dull beat circling through his ears, push and pull, as steady as a seaside wave. His pulse pounds, roaring over the smooth tide of a saxophone, until the only thing he can really hear is the rush of his own blood.

Perhaps he should’ve reconsidered opening the damned thing so quickly.

Hyungwon’s breath only returns through a jolt of surprise, and he feels through his pockets with clammy fingers for the source of it. His phone shakes with another urgent hum, piercing right into the back of his brain with its bright white screen.

“ _Yongsan-gu_ ”

The message immediately swipes itself out of sight, leaving Hyungwon with a blank, pounding headache. He remembers to take another breath, his lungs rattling long and hard against his heart, and he mentally traces his way from the bar to the aforementioned district.

5 minutes. He checks his phone - 10 minutes ‘till midnight. He searches the crowd, ducking high and low in an attempt to spot anyone who would have a vendetta against him.

Nothing.

Well, you can’t spot a criminal if the entire place is filled with them, an ugly voice echoes, articulating, deep down, what he already knew.

Hyungwon curses himself and sweeps out through the door, taking the pictures with him, clenched deep within his coat pocket.  

 

-

 

“Mom?”

A sigh wafts across the line, loving but soul-weary. “My _favorite_ son, you finally decide to call at a time like this?”

He forces a laugh, high-strung and nervous at the top of his throat. “Well - you know me.”

Another sigh. He scratches his nails across the slick surfaces of the photos, trying to expel the iron pressure lodged from the center of his stomach to his chest. “What do you want?”

Hyungwon winces, turning down another twisting alleyway on instinct. If for nothing (and his mother is many many things) she’s always been blunt. He musters the words with a detached tone, from another him that was far, far away from here, far from stumbling through dark passageways, far from sweaty fingers tangling over snuff-level photographs, back to when he was dozing in the warmth of muffled jazz and only the vague plan of an easy deal on his mind. “How’s noona doing?”

“Hyewon? Well-,” a hearty scoff comes through in a burst of static, “she certainly calls more often than you do.”

“Sure, sure,” Hyungwon acquiesces, clenching his teeth against the desperation shaking his voice. “But have you talked to her - or, or seen her recently?”

A second of silence. It drags on as Hyungwon descends deeper into the maze of the underworld, the darkness of the sleeping city replaced with the ever-present buzzing of neon signs selling whatever illicit business that’s open for the night. He almost pulls the phone away to check its battery when his mother finally speaks up again. “...Don’t tell me this has something to do with your godforsaken gang business.”

Hyungwon has to bite back his childish correction - we’re a clan not some dirty gang, _mom_ \- and he paints on a silken layer over the cracks in his voice. “No, no - I’ve just been meaning to get her something for the wedding. You know I’ve always been bad with gifts. I wanted to see if you had any idea what a good one would be - seeing as you probably planned her entire ceremony.”

Unbidden, she falls for the ploy. “God knows I did,” she chuckles, “three children in fifty-one years and not one of them learned a thing about organization.” Hyungwon smiles weakly, allowing his relief to trickle through the speaker in a hum of agreement. His mother continues, the sound of cushions whooshing empty air through the phone, and Hyungwon can already see her settling against her many pillows, running pale pink nails over the raised veins under her membrane-thin skin, “Well, the last I saw of her was two days ago - dinner with the family. Maybe, you should join us sometime.”

He grimaces on instinct, spidering his fingers along the invisible arrows of the alleyway walls. He slides them over minuscule grooves, digs them into silicone slick edges, and hesitantly halts with a foot over the border of Yongsan-gu. There’s no sign to announce it - barring the droning multitude of neon ones - but he knows it without question. Like the green-blue vessels he would walk from his mother’s wrist up to her freckled elbow, he traces the shadowed map ingrained within his own mind now and finds himself at the exact point.

“Next time for sure,” he promises and promptly hangs up.

Right on time - his guilt immediately funnels away into the single cold pinpoint of a gun cocked right against the hunched knob of his neck.

Hyungwon stands, rooted in place, not a sound passing between his lips to the intruder behind him. He stills for long enough that the wet _snick_ of his eyelids over his pupils starts to sound like the same terrifying pounding pulse of his heartbeat through his ears. When he finally swallows, the bob of his Adam’s apple drags like a knife against his skin, and Hyungwon deliriously imagines what it would be like to be torn apart by a bullet at the same time he’s sliced open from within.

And yet, the excruciating pain never comes, even as he attempts to reconcile himself with every dreadful thing he’s done in his life, flashing across his eyes in ice-cold detached flickers of film. Instead, only the needlepoint of an envelope nudges into his palm, making sure his twitching fingers close around the spine of it before the weight behind it is gone, the burning press of the gun lifting from his skin and shifting away with only the brush of a whisper.

“Kill the informant.”

Hyungwon, try as he might, crumples and lands right on his tailbone. With locked fingers he slides open the envelope and considers his fate with his back scraped against the alleyway wall, ransom photos radiating a sickly glow under the looping outlines and edges of the ever-vigilant neon business advertisements

The Clan was bound to fall one day -

He just never expected it would begin with him.

 

-

 

Steps echo, scraping gravel aside for only alleyway rats and buzzing moths to hear. Fluorescent shades mix muddily along the walls, slathering over the flat grey bricks in slick black trails. Light shifts intermittently with each passing hour, and at night each ray seems to trickle, black as blood, through the infested cement seams.

Changkyun emerges through the smattering of garbage, stepping over nondescript black shapes - waste perhaps, illegal contraband, and faceless forgotten remains all twisted together as a conglomerate of stewing, oozing sewage.

He stops at the mouth of the alleyway, the scent of it clinging onto his shoulders with fingers slathered in rot and ruin. He scuffs at a lump of grey ooze caught on the heel of his shoe and strides off, ripping the wafting sewage wind from his body. The vague tunnel behind him cries out with a low exhale, but Changkyun doesn’t spare it a second glance.

Jooheon waits, back propped against the neon-grey splatter, pretending not to notice the other’s presence through the crown of smoke wreathed through his oil-slick hair.

Changkyun blinks - black hair - white fog - images, as if he were in a dream - and he sparks his own miniature flame, hissing a deep orange, into the monochrome shot between them.

The older man meets his stare with a question in his own eyes, smoke coiling comfortably in two long wisps from his nose. Changkyun simply shrugs and puffs out his own intangible ribbon of grey through a hazy halo.

Jooheon chokes on a dry hiccup, and through the diffusing cloud of ash and mist, Changkyun’s lips find his and swallow it - hiccup, question, fumes and all - down with an insistent, dragging inhale.

 

-

 

“What?” Kihyun raises a slight eyebrow at the sight of Hyungwon’s lanky figure ducking awkwardly through the doorway. “Chae Hyungwon early for once? And the first one here too? God is real after all.” He chuckles at his own remark and turns to face the bar again, absentmindedly fingering the closed edge of a plain manila folder.

The corner of Hyungwon’s lip pulls instinctively upwards, but the sound that trails through his mouth borders more on the edge of panic than casual amusement. His boss looks up again, throwing a stare over his shoulder as Hyungwon fidgets back and forth on the spot.

“Well?” he prompts calmly, “What did you come here so early for?” A tapping starts against the glass counter, so subdued it’s close to being indiscernible, but Hyungwon knows it’s Kihyun’s tell-tale tick. After an innumerable amount of poker rounds, it’s become glaringly obvious when anyone fidgets too much with their cards.

He bites numbingly hard at the inside of his cheek, pulling strings of half-formed ideas out of the void with every rhythmic click of nails against the countertop. Kihyun’s eyes bore into him, unblinking with a kind of cold insignificance, and Hyungwon, with a strange surge of brash confidence, completely bullshits in the face of danger. Hey, they always told him he had a great poker face.

“Time to earn my keep right? Can’t have our resident puppy beating me at easy jobs now can I?” He eases onto the stool next to the older man, leaning an elbow over the bar top and letting his long legs fall open in a way that his mother would (and has never) never approve of. He tops it off with a playful tap of his shoe against Kihyun’s ankle and a smile photogenic enough to be plastered all over the next issue of Vogue.

The boss’s gaze flickers - only a single microsecond really - to the tight inseam of his tailored trousers before it’s locked back onto Hyungwon’s lidded stare, but it’s enough. He leans forward, exuding as much casual affection as someone possibly can in such a hunched position, and swipes the folder out from under Kihyun’s curled grip with a deliberate graze of knuckles against fingertips.

The older man sits ramrod-straight, hand still stuck in its previous position. He lets Hyungwon pilfer the file from him with an expression of mild disconcertment and well, faint arousal. To be honest, it’s not the worst look on him. Hyungwon can admit that he feels at least slightly flattered by the almost-tangible stroke of eyes up and down the length of his body.

He begins slipping off his stool, tangling his ankle around Kihyun’s dangling own as some sort of last unspoken gesture, fully intending to head home to drink himself into a state of devastation before he can actually comprehend the consequences of what he’s about to do. Still, a pull in his sleeve catches him right as he’s tucking his impromptu mission against his side.

“Come on, I’ll mix you a drink.” Kihyun gives him a pointed smile, lips pressed tight at the seam.

It’s not a request. Hyungwon dumbly allows himself to be pushed back down into a seat as the other man finally has the height advantage to loom over him.

A strange tapping - even a ticking perhaps - begins to reverberate, and it’s only now that Hyungwon wonders: what has he gotten himself into?

 

-

 

Hyungwon follows the address as dictated by the folder, something of a stumble in his step and an invisible imprint left over his mouth that hasn’t faded ever since last night. He brushes the bruising feeling from his mind as the single car with tinted windows in the deserted garage emerges up ahead, choosing to focus instead on the feverish weight of the handgun cocked at his hip.

By the time the informant has rolled down his window, Hyungwon’s breath is trapped in a chokehold, battering with his heartbeat right up against his ribcage. Before he can greet an all-too-familiar face, Hyungwon clicks back the safety, turns his cheek to the open air - and shoots.

There’s no mistake. A single bullet, a deafening echo, and maybe even the sharp splintering of glass or a pitched scream - he can’t tell which. Certainly, the man’s dead now.

Perhaps, he can even convince himself that this is the end of it. He’s completed his first and last act of betrayal, and whomever the puppet master is, they can’t have any more to ask of him than this right?

Sure, Hyungwon decides, tossing his doubts along with his gun into the roaring inferno engulfing the car and the body in a screaming heap of creaking, liquefied metal. He stills hesitantly for a moment, stopping inches from the fire as if awaiting some shadowy figure to step through the flames, scorched as red as the devil.

Nothing - he just ends up making himself woozy from inhaling the fumes of exhaustive scrap metal for too long. Maybe, he needs some of whatever Kihyun gave him last night to wipe this from memory, this rank scent coating his insides from the top of his throat to the depths of his stomach, this thing that he did, this act of cold _betrayal._

He snaps a picture of the disaster before him and sends it with his back turned to the fire, allowing the cooling heat to reach over the column of his spine like a pair of dry, intimate, lover’s hands.

_informant.jpg - attached_

_as you can see it didn’t go too well_

_can i come over_

The reply arrives barely seconds after his last text, as expected.

_ill have a drink ready_

That’s the quickest thing to a direct yes, and Hyungwon willingly latches onto it, blindly striding through the darkening afternoon and turning his back on the heat of his crime - pulsing, pulsing, with an ever-insistent heartbeat.

 

-

 

Being drunk, Hyungwon decides, is like drowning in a pool.

There’s a loss of senses, a numbness that stretches like tingling silk under your muscles - pleasant almost. He can see the imitation of himself standing on the slippery lip of a pool’s edge and watching another distorted pale body sink to the tiled bottom, bony arms outstretched in some kind mock attempt to float.

And then there he is again: below, looking up through a distorted wavering horizon. Clumps of clear blue and translucent green float in patches like a bubble of jellyfish above him. Through the herd, he can see the way his own toes are gripped over the edge, clawed and powder-white at the knobby joints. Another jellyfish blossoms from a patch of light above him, and Hyungwon squints through its spotted bonnet, attempting to discern an expression, a face, an outline of self.

The mumble of water roars soothingly within his ears, and he can only continue sinking, falling until the man above him is simply flat - empty of anything to recognize him by.

“-started without us?”

“-come on now...can’t blame him-”

The water drains from the pool, rushing and gurgling through the pipes until there is only the steady drip-drip of loose beads against the tiles. Something flat and hard taps against his back, and Hyungwon can only assume he’s finally hit the concrete pool bottom.

Then - he lands - awakens - cheek-first against the marble bar top, and is met with six flickering pairs of eyes. There’s grey amusement crinkling through some, careful question guarded darkly in others, but most of all there’s pity drooping pathetically, staining their gazes a cheap swirling maroon. It reminds Hyungwon of a sour bottle of red wine, and he quickly knocks back the rest of the watery concoction left in his glass - ice, condensation, and all.

“You could’ve just left it to me,” Changkyun hums casually, plopping onto the seat next to Hyungwon. “It was supposed to be my job anyway - easy rookie stuff right?” He tilts his cheek lazily against his palm, appraising the older man’s response through slow, methodical blinks.

Hyungwon runs his fingers up and down over the nonsensical etchings of his glass, frozen drops gathering with each sluggish swipe. There’s something about the youngest’s gaze that makes him seem...wanting, as if he’s trying to provoke a response. Changkyun swivels back and forth on the stool, the tips of his shoes dangling clear off the floor as a light smile steals over his mouth. He tucks it against his palm, but the amusement clearly shows through in the hazy slits of his unflinching stare.

Hyungwon’s clearly smashed when the tip of a fox’s orange tail rises and falls teasingly from behind Changkyun’s slouched back. He can feel the dryness crackling across the top of his mouth from how long its fallen open, but he’s currently too incredulous to consider closing it.

“Alright, enough-” Kihyun jabs grumpily, dislodging the youngest with a careless shove at his back. Changkyun falls, stumbling with a pitched yelp and scampers away to lean against Jooheon’s side, far at the end of the counter. He sends a pointed glare their way, but it's more in the vein of a hurt puppy than a conniving fox. There’s no bobbing bush-tail, or inky black stare, only the natural trail of shadows and a pair of sullen pouts, so Hyungwon aptly scoops up his dropped jaw with a loud click.

“Don’t mind the mutt,” Kihyun mutters, sympathy scattered in golden flecks under the high arch of his lids, “He just likes the attention.” He pours Hyungwon another drink, the liquid swirling hornet-yellow before settling into a dazzling refraction of the exact shade pooled within Kihyun’s eyes. He hands the drink over, fingers drenched in cold condensation. The sensation drips, grazing over Hyungwon’s own hand, and he knocks it back in one go. A warm, heavy weight coils contentedly at the bottom of his stomach, and he dazedly slumps back down against the counter. Kihyun’s gold stare blurs and sharpens in an erratic rhythm, and Hyungwon occupies himself with this phenomenon of light, forcing himself to blink slower and slower just to watch the way glittering outlines appear at the edge of his vision every time his lashes brush a little too closely together.

Absentmindedly, the older man runs a broad palm up and down the length of Hyungwon’s bowed spine. They eventually fall into a dim rhythm - up - down - blink - open - until the younger man is breathing as steady as the steaming engine of a hot air balloon. Kihyun allows his hand to still at the edge of a hunched shoulder, and he finally indulges in a moment of quiet intimacy.

The imprint of skin against cotton is a warm comfort on the edge of a cold spring day.

At the far end of the bar, Changkyun swipes a glass of watered-down whiskey from Jooheon’s open palm and sips it sparingly, watching the dozing pair from the corner an unflinching eye.

 

-

 

“Come back to bed,” a voice rasps through the sheer and utter darkness, muffled with the blanket of sleep, strain, and years of bad habits. Bare arms wind loosely around his equally nude stomach, and Changkyun shivers, distracted by the frigid static that prickles between their skin.

He assents, a low sound stirring roughly through his throat, and he limply curls his fingers over the dry grip around his waist. A stilted hum meets his own, melding itself into the goose-bumped line of his spine with a ticklish exhale and a soft caress. It leaves a trail cooling over his skin, each press smearing minute dots of damp that sit like pools of condensation around the stately glass tower of a columned glass, glowing green with fluorescent drink on a lonely Friday evening atop the counter. The draft that brushes along his spine cools him and leaves him twitching at the same time. He always liked calling it “pre-drink shivers” in his mind - makes it seem like less of a habit that way.

His phone is still glaringly bright in his other hand, perched at a precarious angle so that the contents of the screen reflect a careful blank. It’s late (or really _too early_ ) enough that vision tends to blur whenever you stare too hard, for waking hours to consist of hazy dream hallucinations, but Changkyun is awake enough to catch himself at the border between imagination and reality. And surely - _this_ , the single line of text spread beneath his thumb, is real enough.

He turns, a shadow of a smile illuminated from below, and Jooheon frowns up at him from his cocoon within the blankets. “Did hyung need something?” he asks, slipping his fingers from Changkyun’s tingling skin to prop himself up by the chin instead. With his bare chest half-pressed against the flowing creased sheets and his feet tangled distractedly among the rest of the liquid darkness, Jooheon inadvertently smolders at him with the allure of a sullen, sleep-deprived mermaid. The bare hint of light in his eyes slip and slide with hidden intentions, questions, _suspicions_ even - but the line of his lips stays resolutely sealed as he simply waits for Changkyun to reply.

“Nothing.” Changkyun tucks the message away with a _click_ of his thumb, and the meager glow between them collapses into pure black again. Through the empty space, they easily draw towards one another - heat seeking heat, the imprints of fingers fitting over the raw grooves of fresh bruises - and Changkyun closes his eyes as the intangible line of dreams finally blurs over the rest of his vision.

 

-

 

“...” “...”

Hyungwon’s mind bursts with a rush of alertness as a force of vertigo seemingly yanks him half-awake out of bed. There’s an insistent buzzing from somewhere underneath rumpled blankets, and he blindly fishes dry fingers towards the source of the sound.

The screen flashes a flat white, enough for Hyungwon to truly blink himself awake - but the shock doesn’t fade. Instead, it burns with the raw heat of an open-palmed slap, ripping everything open from his stomach up until there are only the stinging fumes of his own charred insides reeking inside the column of his throat and through his nose.

The stark light only adds to the stale effect of the ransom photos, cutting his sister’s faded scars open with a sharper, deadlier edge. Hyungwon’s finds himself looking over the same ones over and over again, unblinking, as if some kind of clue could be hidden within the swollen pixels of her open stare.

He clicks his phone shut, plunging the sight before him into darkness again. Grotesque outlines flash translucent through the shadow, and he presses the pads of his fingers against his eyes, wiping them away with an insistent, shaky touch.

When the ghosts finally fade, when her stare finally stops pinning him flat with unflinching blame, he finds reassurance in the worn crags of his handgun. It clicks with a warm promise, and he nestles the callus of his knuckle against its edge as he slips into the night air.

 

-

 

“ _Singye-dong”_

_“Kill Yoo Kihyun”_

 

-

 

“Behind the alleyway, huh?”

Hyungwon jolts, shifting the grit of the wall audibly under the line of his spine. He digs back hard, feeling the damp brick crawl into his collar and over his skin. Silence, under the shallow current of his breathing - but Kihyun already knows. One foot around the corner, across the neon shadow, and his ruse is already over.

“I knew you were there.” Kihyun leans casually in the middle of the dense street, huddled in by cast lines and edges, the world seemingly ready to topple in brick by jagged brick. He tucks his hands into his pockets and even turns to Hyungwon with a close-lipped smile.

Hyungwon stares him down, an outline of hazy black and white, tipped a flickering green around the barrel end of his gun. The lights blur around Kihyun’s still figure, fading in out and out of focus, and at some point, Hyungwon finds the grey line between his vision, the oozing shadows, and the signs to be mixing into muddy, indistinguishable rainwater.

His gun _pitter-patters_ with fallen drops, only slight tremors at first. An ominous rumble rolls through a faraway telephone line, and the vibrations immediately escalate into the crash of a downpour.

Kihyun raises both hands, bared, as if to say _well, what can you do?_

Hyungwon braces his feet against the sewage slush and only clenches his gun tighter in response. The metal grates with a wet squeal underneath his skin, and he forces himself to breathe through the rattling silence that follows afterward.

Kihyun lowers his hands, something smooth uncoiling under the motion of his thin shoulders as he does so. In his mind’s eye, Hyungwon observes a sleeping panther, far away under a shaded branch, sleek spine rising and curving with deep rumbling purrs, the yellow slits of its languid stare lingering in and out of view like shutter slides as it breathes in the easy fear of nervous gazelles. Hyungwon keeps his gun cocked.

“Do you remember,” Kihyun starts, and Hyungwon startles at the sound of his voice, the low lisp of it through the _hush-hush_ of the rain, “when I first met you?”

Hyungwon bites his tongue, tasting salt and grit and the dust of the sky in a rusty tang. An ache is winding its way around his forearms, plastering the wet weight of his jacket against his skin and dragging him down. He raises his aim, blocking Kihyun out entirely in a point of black and grey.

“I do.” The older man steps forward, hunched as water streaks down the plane of his cheek. Beneath the rivulets of his flattened bangs, he treads toward Hyungwon with an unflinching hardness in his stare. “I remember seeing you, sprawled against that bar, that listless glaze across your eyes - you were dead before you had even learned how to live.”

He laughs, a short scoff that plummets into the miniature flood wavering around them. “Don’t think that you were ever a charity case, a street dog I happened to take pity on.” He strides closer, each step reverberating miniature waves across the surface of the street. Hyungwon can feel the ripples echo over the soaked toe of his own shoe, pushing and pulling with the swaying pervasiveness of a full moon’s tide.

“You’re not.” He stops _right_ there, the tip of his nose barely meeting the line of Hyungwon’s lips. Despite having to crane his neck down, and Kihyun having to raise his, in the obsidian stone of the older man’s eyes Hyungwon can feel the rush of vertigo surge right to his head. The alleyway isn’t flat and damp, but instead a roaring cliff with only the hissing mist of the sea underneath its infinite edge - and Hyungwon, tip-toed at its very front, feels all too small looking down.

“Because you’re one of us.” Somehow, somehow Hyungwon’s gun has nodded off, his wrist all rubbery and letting the metal tap soft against his leg. There’s a distant touch tracing over his cheek, warmth numbing through the cold rainwater into his bones.

Kihyun’s stare is wet, overcast with flashing thunderclouds, almost soft at sharp corners. “Because you’re one of _mine._ ”  

The warmth slicks down to his pulse, and Kihyun’s rough palm fits itself over his neck, the arch of his thumb digging a blunt indent into Hyungwon’s jaw. Like this, hard-handed and soft-eyed, he holds him there as if he intends to _keep_ him.

And Hyungwon - he closes his eyes, washes away the shadows, the acidic splash of neon signs and electric-blue distortions in the miniature puddles beneath him, and allows himself to be swallowed whole.

 

“ _w_ _hat’s mine is mine, is mine, is mine. and I never let go easy.”_

 

_-_

 

When his phone rings, Hyungwon is hanging off the edge of his bed, the dull, bleeding, stump of his heart fully expecting the call. Over the tinny line, his mother’s composure rings strong, but there’s an undercurrent of a scratchy throat under her usual facade of heavy perfume and brocade blouses.

For once, even his father coughs a gruff reassurance at him - but Hyungwon feels stiff inside. In the space under the bruised line of his sternum, between the cage of his ribs, he listens for some kind of echo, gropes for some kind of sentiment. He finds nothing.

(Because he knew, had already known from the moment Kihyun’s black glass eyes had pressed flat against his own, pupils shaking like a newborn foal’s in that dark alleyway - he had already been as good as lost).

A rational part of him sighs and calls for regret, for guilt, for the loss of family and blood.

Somewhere though, another part of him buried deep within the sludge and rainwater and humming electricity of yesterday, the part of him still marked red-hot by Kihyun’s one-handed grip - it fixes itself like a well-worn collar around his throat. The feeling nestles tight inside the empty cradle of his chest, and Hyungwon finally understands he could never regret what he did.

 

-

 

In the end, only Jooheon and Changkyun show up on the scheduled day of the funeral. They’re a perfect pair in their penguin suits, wearing matching collars that have been rumpled long before they’ve even arrived. Guilt as blatant as the stain of a lover’s lipstick blooms bright across their necks and cheeks. Hyungwon eyes their crinkled suits, following the purple berry trail of bites, sure that their little marks run lower than he’d ever like to imagine.

“Sorry hyung,” Jooheon mumbles, fishing at his half-looped tie. Hyungwon blinks, shrugs, and turns to look at the cemetery instead. It’s not like he told anyone about the date anyway. Changkyun hoarsely rumbles his assent in an odd attempt at reassurance.

Hyungwon watches the pair of them fidget, one motion after the other - leg-jittering, cuff-pulling, finger-combing through hair. Well, he acquiesces, at least they showed up halfway decent.

“Kihyun hyung had a meeting,” Jooheon supplies, eyes trained on the shiny corner of Hyungwon’s dress shoe. He smooths his mop of dark hair back against his scalp with impatient, raking fingers. “Hyunwoo hyung probably went with him,” he continues, the fingers on his left hand dancing to a silent rhythm against the crease of his pant leg. “Hoseok hyung had to take in the shipment, and Minhyuk hyung…” The silent tapping increases erratically, and he trails off again with a pointed stare at Hyungwon’s shoe.

“-and Minhyuk hyung is probably still sleeping,” Changkyun finishes, shoulders loose as he kicks a whirling dust cloud into the drab silence between the three of them. Out of the corner of his eye, Hyungwon watches Jooheon wince with an audible intake of breath. The youngest only continues shuffling cave paintings into the dirt, tracing over cracked patterns that have suddenly managed to capture every ounce of his attention.

The newly chilled spring wind picks up and scatters his faded etchings from underfoot towards a faraway land. Tiny specks of silt flit away, carrying cryptic messages in the vague direction of the row of gray headstones. Good enough - Hyungwon takes that as his cue and allows himself to slide into the cadence of the pulsing wind, pacing slowly as another set of steps stride into place behind him.

His sister’s grave looms as empty and flat as every other gray lump embedded in the field, an incomplete house for a broken body. When he places his palm over its curve, the stone burns cold for the first few moments. Hyungwon drags out the sensation, scraping his knuckles over loose grit, transmitting his own muddied pulse into the rotting earth.

When something in the air picks up again, a kind of stirring, he sighs and tucks his hand back against his side with a resounding sigh. It’s too late to get his coat now. “Come on,” he motions loosely at the two slouched a few respectable paces away from the foot of the grave, “let’s head back.”  

They follow, cushy steps sinking silently away from dead ears, backs turned, towards the unspoken promise of _home_.  

 

-

 

“Group retrieval later. You all know it’s the warehouse shipment we’ve been expecting for months in advance. The new informant tells us it shouldn’t be any trouble,” Kihyun nods, scanning a watchful eye over every one of them gathered around the bar, “but let’s be careful anyway.”

Resounding grumbles pop up from the semicircle, the loudest sounding from the cramped armrest where the youngest two are sprawled all over one another. Kihyun glare flares through the twinkling rim of his glass, but the other members chuckle, having fun at their leader’s expense.

“Are you good to go?” Kihyun turns instead to Hyungwon, leaning solitary at his side with his lidded gaze turned downward into a watered down drink.

Silence descends like a shattering glass, and immediately, six pairs of eyes are on him. Hyungwon curls his fingers in a basket hold around the engraved ridges of his drink, not looking up as he deliberates on an answer.

He could say no, even outright just walk out through the front door and somehow get away with it. And yet - he glances around, looking into every stare, drinking in dark colors tinged with worry, distrust, and judgment, and then he meets Kihyun’s smooth, coiling own - and he knows. He’s going to stay.

“Yeah-” he coughs out, downing the mystery drink quickly. “Yeah, I’m good.” This time his voice comes out steady, stable, and Hyungwon pushes the glass away. The knobs in his back pop in slow succession as he raises himself to stand straight and tall over the counter. Everyone’s stares are venerated before him, and he finally knows where he belongs.

 

-

 

In retrospect, it couldn’t have ended so easily. Kill a sister, gain a loyal member - end of the story right? If, _oh_ if only, he had been as smart as Kihyun had always thought he was, he would’ve tracked down the mystery mole, shot them clean through, wiped his hands of the matter, and finally - he would’ve gotten his happy ending right then and there.

Now, what’s left of happiness, but smeared gore all over empty warehouse walls and a few (give or take) rifle bullets lodged in his vital organs? There’s certainly an end coming for him soon, if not the quivering shock that’s already reaching from the waist up, then the overwhelming blood loss will be the last to seal the deal.  

 _Kihyun_ \- he turns, something creaking under his jaw, and even as his vision burns he can see the static hole busted right through the other side of the man’s head. He shifts away, a labored heave threatening to split him open from the chest down, and he knocks his head with a heavy swing into the pillar behind him.

It’s already reached this point - he can’t even lift his neck anymore.

It was all fake, a simple retrieval mission turned into a police raid - and now they’re here, all of them dashed into smears against the ground, Hyungwon wheezing on the very edge of his own life as the red blur fades in closer and closer with every rattling exhale.

“In the end, the winner takes all.”

He shakes uselessly, pupils shifting through dripping amber towards the sudden echo of sound. The words float around him, in every direction all at once, and Hyungwon’s torn throat gurgles through the exposed air as he forcefully jerks himself forward.

Scuffed shoes, cut pant legs, shed jacket, up and up - and there’s Changkyun, the synthetic sheen of a kevlar vest sticking out in a blatant boast against a measly cut beneath his collarbone. He stops right before Hyungwon’s limp legs, spread just as they were when he took multiple shots through the chest, and squats down with a slow comfortable cracking of his joints. He tilts his head sideways, an unbidden glee rising through the thin corners of his lips and lacing tightly into the black slits of his eyes.

“Didn’t think it’d be me huh? The little wolf with no manners had all you dumb mutts fooled.”

Hyungwon’s throat ripples with another fresh wash of blood, and he can only wait for his eyes to roll back like glossy pinballs within their loose sockets until they land on Jooheon’s prone body curled not so far from his own. From here, it’s simply the black plane of his suit jacket, the dark splatter of his hair spread against the ground as if caught in the freeze frame of a slow Sunday morning nap. Hyungwon rolls his glassy eyes back towards Changkyun, and he knows that’s not what either of them sees.

“-you, you-killed him,” it’s the only thing he can force out, before a claw is squeezing tight around his diaphragm again, threatening his breath with interspersed pulses of black and red. He’s not holding out any hope for medical attention, but from the deep twisting lines in Changkyun’s expression, he’s at least achieved his one last act of spite.

“ _Shut up_.” The younger man wraps Hyungwon’s swollen knuckles around his own fallen gun and digs the barrel right into a fresh stomach wound. “It was a ruse anyway, and he fell so easily for it. All the better for me.”

Hyungwon’s scream goes hoarse from the pain and then drops into complete silence, trailing off into the clicks and coughs of onlooking moths and mice. He stares directly into Changkyun’s eyes, looking through the static haze shrouding across his own, and underneath the frenzied cover of anger, he can still spot the watery glint of heart-ache.

So what if he’s been played for the fool here? Even as his last breath claws through his stomach and whistles out past his teeth, Hyungwon grins, gritting past rust and blood to taste a final rush of victory.

He’s played poker long enough to know when someone is lying to his face.

“ _Liar-”_

 

_Bang!_

 

[*](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7ea2mi9KyE)

 

The murmur of the crowd rumbles, clamoring like a storm outside. The men don’t pay it any attention, choosing to focus instead on the spluttering bulb, the sole source of light skittering over their tightly clenched cards.

“Alright boys,” Kihyun leans forward, devilish victory worn handsomely on the corners of his smile. “Last round.”

Minhyuk twirls a dart around his fingers, roughly turning the sharp point of it over and over against his skin. _The boss has won again,_ he considers, irritating his palm with the thin needle-edged press of the child’s toy.

There’s a nervous twitch to Kihyun’s thumb; it’s been going on all game. Tapping against the table, sliding cards errantly to the muffled crooning of the low jazz whispering in from the outside - and now he finally puts it forward, fingers curved rigid over its shiny red face. Three Kings to end it all - his trump card.

A low mumble of dissent and dissatisfaction rises past the filmy cigarette smoke - but cheating is always on the table, and no one ever admits to being caught. Hoseok digs his elbows into the knobby crooks of the chair, sullen, and Jooheon runs his bangs flat back against his scalp, frustrated, but they all sit back and wait for their spoils to be taken from them.

Kihyun winks, all subtlety begone, and he reaches, ready to sweep in the towers of chips with one wide, decadent embrace.

 _Fwip!_ The game hasn’t ended yet.  

They all freeze - Kihyun, arms still cupped and outspread, the comical look of shock marring every semblance of confidence in his cocky grin. The hinges of chairs squeak, the smooth rumble of a lazy piano drags on - but there it is, unmoving by neither hair nor breadth - two solid aces on the table. Black and pointed spades.

Hyunwoo is the first to break the tense moment of surprise. He rocks, tipping back into the flimsy seat, cigarette still posed and smoking from his cocked right hand, jaw working open with crooked laughter for all the bar to hear. “He’s got you good Kihyun,” he announces between low rasps, pointing falling trails of ash in Changkyun’s direction. “Who knew? The youngest learns from the best after all.”

The half-leaning man glowers, but he sits back down with a decidedly loud _squeak_ of chair joints. Changkyun smiles, eyes slitted, and rises to reclaim the glory. The table shakes with short barks and hollers, all of them slamming and sloshing glasses against the stained cloth as their youngest takes it all with a single greedy sweep. There is no eloquence in the tight strain of his back when he clambers across half the table, no patience in the grappling of his fingers over each notch in every chip - but they ruffle his hair, pat and pull at the wrinkled seams of his suit anyway. It’s the boy’s first win, and he sprawls righteously over his towers of blue and red, the king and his newly fallen kingdom.

Kihyun tears the dying cigarette from Hyunwoo’s dangling fingers and takes in one final drag. He exhales a puff of smoke, half-clear through the dim light, scanning around the table with yellow dragon eyes. The cigarette is stamped into dirty concrete, its ashes rubbed into irritating non-existence, scraped over by an uncaring foot. Chairs creak once again towards the table, and this time Hoseok passes the youngest an unlit stick, pristine in all its white and tan rolled wrapping. Jooheon flicks back his lighter, metal clicking, and soon, paper and ash hissing as Changkyun tilts easily into the flame. A new wave of narcotic fog rises in plumes between them, passing like a veil across their eyes, and Changkyun huffs a playful trail towards the elder’s half-parted lips. Jooheon’s pupils twitch, but he draws it in, lazily watching the way his still-open lighter plays with the oily shadows in the younger’s gaze.

A low cat-call whistles from across the room, too dim to see through all the smoke, but then there are rough hands pinching and pulling at their backs - _enough with it, lovebirds_. Changkyun takes another drag, deep enough to settle the erratic hummingbird heartbeat within him, and he leaves the stick dangling, smoking between his fingers. Gray fumes roll languidly from his nose, through his mouth, settling like the Acropolis’s ruined columns over mounds of shuffling cards. He exhales, another roiling fan of dreary exhaust - and there they are, emblazoned red cards pressed to his pulse, cuffed just so under the beady button of his sleeve. Aces of hearts.

He can’t suppress the low chuckle that twists and coils from his stomach up to the smoke-stained roof of his mouth. The slow ruckus of chips and grunted insults drown him out, so he sits back, reclining upon his plastic ramshackle throne and nudges the softened tip of the stick back into the seam of his lips. Hyungwon’s blank stare catches his from across the room, and Changkyun grins around the cigarette, bobbing it up, then down in an idle smile. He stretches languidly, tilting his neck until it pops, and drowns out the other man’s dead, fish-eyed glower with another shuddering drag. The smoke hisses, simmering across the room, past their shadowed gazes, and Changkyun weaves a hand through the silken threads of his own hazy grey dreams.

Cheating is always fair play - and for him? He’ll never admit to being caught.

Because, in the end, the winner takes all.

 

**Author's Note:**

> spoiler tag *major character deaths*
> 
> that's all guys, thank you for reading!


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